The county was named for David Finney, the Lieutenant Governor of Kansas from 1881 and 1885.

[3] The first white settlers arrived in 1878, settling along the Arkansas River and its tributaries.

[5] The town of Garden City was founded in 1879 by the cattle firm of Jones and Plummer, who established it as a shipping point for Texas cattle being driven along the Jones & Plummer Trail to Dodge City.

[3] As described in Blackmar's Cyclopedia, Garden City "was a typical frontier town, with its gambling houses, dance halls and other adjuncts of border civilization" in its early years, but it quickly transformed into an agricultural center for southwest Kansas.

[3] Other early settlements like Holcomb, Kalvesta, and Pierceville sprung up in the 1880s as Finney County became a prosperous region for wheat farming and cattle ranching.

[6] By 1910, Finney County had a population exceeding 10,000 as agriculture firmly took root in the region after its pioneering days on the frontier.

Finney County is included in the Garden City, KS Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Finney County has primarily supported Republican presidential candidates throughout its history.

Finney County was a prohibition, or "dry", county until the Kansas Constitution was amended in 1986 and voters approved the sale of alcoholic liquor by the individual drink with a 30% food sales requirement.

[17] † means a community is designated a Census-Designated Place (CDP) by the United States Census Bureau.